<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>as stories unfold by LocketShoru</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679361">as stories unfold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru'>LocketShoru</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>in kismet marcescence [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends/Lovers, Fluff, Griffon Minos' POV, M/M, Pisces Albafica's POV, Purple Prose, alternating pov, discussions of philosophy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:00:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,340</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679361</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A chance meeting repeats. The hourglass turns over. The stars watch and silently judge, and he doesn't know how to be sorry, yet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Griffon Minos/Pisces Albafica</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>in kismet marcescence [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645942</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>as stories unfold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is about where I realized I actually needed to have a plot. So I originally thought this would be five parts (RGK, SS, SLVB, this, and the epilogue), and ding-dong, guess who's wrong, looks like it's going to be at <i>least</i> eight. Most of which are fuckin' fluff. I can confirm that the epilogue is the last one I'll write, but honestly, since I've already made it clear I'm writing this entirely out of order, I can basically just write as my muse decides.<br/>I hope the POV jumping isn't too unclear, though Minos' narration probably is. He bullies me.<br/>Lastly, I want to update Aeternum next, then dive more into Mirrorverse a bit. When my finals are done. In exactly a week. Eurgh, fuck uni I just want to write.</p><p><i>Note:</i> When IKM is finished, all of the supposed-oneshots that are chapters will be shifted over to LocketShoruOLD, and then one singular fic titled In Kismet Marcescence will be uploaded with all the chapters in chronological order. Keep that in mind for now, I'll edit this when that fic happens.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The inn hallway was quiet despite how loud this city could be, even at this time of night. The work-week had finally ended, so it seemed the whole city was out celebrating and relaxing. He wasn’t going to get anything done, so he had retreated to the inn, and better yet, to his room on the fourth floor.</p><p>Albafica sidestepped around one of the cleaning staff, mind not too focused on his surroundings - the noise outside made it far too difficult to - and all but bumped into someone else, on their way outside. The other person stepped back as reflexively as he did, and it wasn’t until an apology was already halfway out of his mouth that he realized he recognized him.</p><p>“My apolo- <em>apologies</em>,” he said, repeating the word after the moment’s surprise. “It’s you.”</p><p>The other boy, with hair white as snow and close enough that his light violet eyes were all too clear, blinked back at him. “‘Tis I,” he agreed. He folded his arms, leaning his shoulder against the wall, a sly smile playing upon his lips. “A wandering little fish, I see.”</p><p>He opened his mouth to respond, before thinking better of it. “Perhaps,” he said finally. He wasn’t going to give this boy any more indulgence than he had to.</p><p>“A pity the sands don’t favour us tonight,” the other said, his tone imperious. “Perhaps later, I should be graced with your presence.” He swept past Albafica, his traveller’s cloak fluttering behind him, and was gone at the next turn.</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t see the other boy again for another few sennights, until he was on another mission up north, riding from Athens up to Transylvania investigating a report of some very strange occurrences. And then, one afternoon he’d stopped in a town somewhere in Wallachia for supplies. His best travelling cloak was a little too badly worn through, and he stepped into the seamstress’ shop, intending on getting it either fixed or seeing about buying a new one. </p><p>There he was, white hair tied back in a low ponytail tied in a thick, garishly-bright violet ribbon, eagerly chatting away in the native tongue he didn’t recognize, carrying what looked to be a dyed leather vest-corset. The boy turned, and his soft smile turned brighter, eyes glittering and cosmos bright with a dark, vicious joy. Albafica wondered, for just a moment, who between the two was the real monster.</p><p>The boy extended his smile, flashing a few pointed teeth, slipping back into a Greek they both understood. “Fancy meeting you so far from your way, young fish,” he greeted, not dipping his head but eyes sparkling. He licked his lips a little, his cosmos not losing that dangerous shine. Albafica flushed red.</p><p>“Hello to you too,” he answered. “I’m… surprised you’re this far from Greece.”</p><p>The boy tsked, but swept past him all the same. “Stars still turn, and the sands still don’t have enough of themselves to watch the flowers bloom. It’s always in threes, isn’t it? Tragedy and true love alike.”</p><p>He slipped out the door and vanished, leaving Albafica blinking, puzzling through his always so nonsensical words.</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>Albafica strode down the road in the centre of town, shoulders squared, chin held high, silver cloak fanning out behind him in the breeze. The civilians of the town wouldn’t bother him, he was just seeking information, and his armour was enough of a warning and imperative to stay away. He wasn’t evil, they had no need to be properly afraid of him - but he certainly was dangerous to their ability to stay alive.</p><p>He stopped at a market stall, one of spices and some cooking supplies. The seller appeared to be an eccentric-looking man in his late fifties, old enough to have been considering retirement for several years, still present enough to have argued against the idea. And it wasn’t like he was going to be getting very far from a casual observer, but the truth of the matter was simple: only eccentric people really paid attention, and he needed what others might not have noticed the first time.</p><p>“Good morning, sir,” he began, voice at a reasonable level. “Was your shop open last Thursday, around four o’clock?”</p><p>“Aye, Sire,” the man answered, and he noted a flicker of awakened, guarded cosmos movement approximately twenty feet away, leaving the seamstress’ shop. He’d felt that cosmos before, though he couldn’t place where from. “You’re askin’ about that fire, Sire, nothin’ to be done for it. There was a robbery before it all went up in smoke, though, laddie, that’s where the real problem was, I tell you.”</p><p>He straighted, tilting his head in interest. If they were connected, then his job was either a lot easier or a hell of a lot harder. “Can you tell me what you know about the robbery?”</p><p>The man nodded, opening his mouth to speak, and suddenly went very, very still, his widening eyes his only movement. He pointed to something behind him. “I think you should deal with that first, laddie,” he said, voice suddenly hesitant. Albafica turned.</p><p>One of the other stalls was going up in flames, slowly but surely, and four people were trying and failing to put out the sparks. They beat it with cloth and with water, and it kept smoking. The glitter of cosmos in the air was unmistakable. He bared his teeth, ever so slightly, and charged the scene, rushing to give aid and break apart the spell before it collapsed in a supernova of power. </p><p>Stars favour his own stupidity. He charged the embers and found himself tumbling, facefirst in a parody of a somersault, the ground below him turning from stone and dirt to brambles and ivy, until he landed in what seemed to be a clearing. The town around him was gone, nothing around but sweet, empty air and greenery. Trees as brightly coloured as emeralds and tiger’s-eye, deepening into jade and peridot. The ivy curled and hung around every branch, the trees themselves wider than he could have wrapped his arms around. Some of them, not even three people his size could achieve that particular feat.</p><p>“What the…?” he asked to nobody in particular, rising from his position. He called a rose to his hand just in case - it didn’t do to be anything less than cautious - and looked around. Somewhere to his left was another cosmos, awakened and not bothering to hide its dark, forthcoming presence. Whoever it was, they weren’t moving much, and they did not seem concerned with his arrival. He turned on his heel, and strode toward it, stepping over the underbrush without noticing the way it caught at his trousers.</p><p> </p><p>The wind, careless and sweeping through him, lazy like the summer’s day it was. The taste of the not-so-distant sea on his lips, salty like tears, like the flavour of everything sweet. The life that bloomed around him, like it never knew how to die, like the Meikai didn’t wait for its arrival as it did for so much else. The Meikai, tense, waiting for a future that never came in an endless present. Everything, one way or another, came home. He took a breath, deep and alive and fulfilling, stretching his arms out to either side of him, wings opened wide, the soft metal <em>clink</em> of his surplice in the wind.</p><p>How wondrous to have escaped a second time, how ever more wondrous his idea of a second teleportation to throw them all off the scent. There wouldn’t be baying hounds for him yet, no, he went and he hadn’t looked back, taken the road that was available to him, asked for nothing to help him wayfind through the woods. He hadn’t broken any of the rules that mattered. Damned be what the Lady said! He was Judge, he was General, and he wasn’t allowing the world to take that away from him. No, the world was wilder far, and he didn’t need to stay where the eyes of those less wild could find him.</p><p>A fluttering cosmos appeared over the horizon, behind him in the forest, where previously only beasts had wandered. No, humanity hadn’t discovered this area yet, this was still wild and true, the land of the beasts. And it had been warded that way, warded by those who howled at this moon and sang their screams to the glittering, endless pathway of stars.</p><p>He turned as this presence, a lost bird on the wind, appeared between an archway of trees, like a door that might yet open on another plane, and if the wind stole his breath or he dropped it over the cliffside, well, he didn’t care.</p><p>The boy was just his age, the same one he’d seen a fortnight ago, the same poisonous rose he’d thought one day might bloom where he could see, if fate chanced to love him that moondown. He blinked. Had his second teleport accidentally pulled another along with him? It hardly fit the rules, though he’d never asked. Did it count, this surprising twist of fate?</p><p>“Oh,” the boy said, and he lowered the rose in his hand, with its wicked thorns ever-so-sharp, the sparkling blossom of danger and adventure, things the world would eventually burn for remembering. “It’s you. Where are we?”</p><p>He remembered. The minnow of the twelfth temple, who surely recognized him as clear as the stars in his cloth seemed to, remembered him. His reputation, or the call he was suddenly so sure they’d both heard, that impossibility he dared give a name to.</p><p>“Back into the legends and just around the corner,” he answered, airily, matter-of-fact. “Stay a while, young rose, come see where the wilds call the beasts.” He beckoned him forward, easily, hoping, daring to hold the knife over his own heart. The boy narrowed his eyes, his steps just within the safety of the treeline, his fate still within the wilds that never dreamed of falling, of flying, of dying. He almost couldn’t bring himself to corrupt it, but ah, the brightest stars fall apart the sweetest, the most violently; and he was always meant to be the dark angel that turned so many stories like this aside.</p><p>Innocence died kind, in war, a dual-edged scalpel of cruelty in a world of sledgehammers and brute strength. Better yet were the ideals that survived, and what stories the victors had to tell. The boy debated for another moment, and then made that first step out of the treeline, towards the clearing at the top of the cliff.</p><p>“What’s your name?” he asked, blunt and graceless, like a stone that fell from the towers of old. </p><p>He twitched a smile, the dare to come closer playing upon his lips. “If you want that, young rose, you must offer me something in return. Will you turn your steps away from this path of mine, bloody and trailing?”</p><p>The boy turned his head ever so slightly to the left, puzzling through his words. “I won’t run away if you tell me your name,” he answered, slowly. “I assume that’s what you’re asking for.”</p><p>His smile was wider this time, not quite splitting the sky but enough. Oh, now they were surely both ensnared in the trap woven for them, and it would be a majestic day indeed for the moonglow and the stars to witness the wounds it would take to escape.</p><p>“My name is Minos, then,” he said, and for a moment, the delicate balance of surprise and smugness was struck at the expression of the boy’s face, the momentary, fleeting presence of terror and anger, before he relaxed again. His reputation surely preceded him, though his surplice seemed not to. He was unique in all the Meikai, indeed. How little the twelfth temple bore witness to the howling in the darkness under their roses. “And yours, dear flower?”</p><p>The boy only narrowed his eyes, folding his arms across his chest. Every moment before his answer dragged on, like a snare to his wings, like the slow heat of the flames rising to catch his breast for the execution table. “Albafica,” he said, finally.</p><p>“You promised not to run.”</p><p>“So I did.” When he beckoned a second time, the siren boy - Albafica, like the flowers of dawn, like the blossoms grown over so many silver-cried graves - stepped forward, followed him off the pathways written in the stars. When Minos settled onto the grass, legs crossed under him, he followed. There was at least five feet between them. He could almost taste the poison of him, the melody that sung of danger that might actually grace his immortality with its presence.</p><p>So little did, like so little touched the stars. He had wings, and Albafica had pretty poison if not prettier words to listen to. He reclined a bit back, settling his wings on the grass like a parody of a wedding trail, of bones so broken they would never find their way together one last time. Albafica eyed him, cosmos glittering blue with its hesitancy, dark with its inability to trust quite yet. But bright, still, with interest.</p><p>“The stars bade witness to you in Katorini, a bell-chime earlier,” he commented. “What did they say to you?”</p><p>“Nothing I heard,” said he in response, and he did not elaborate further until Minos raised an eyebrow, white as snow and piqued. He sighed, a deep sound settling somewhere in his chest, hidden from any view beneath his golden armour. “There was a fire earlier, and the shopkeeper who saw it happen said there had been a robbery, and then I saw another fire, and suddenly I’m here.”</p><p>If he had sprung the second trap toward him intentionally, guilt might yet sail the starless seas of his wayward emotions, but ah, he was still flying, still free, and he cared not where the wind took him. One teleport may yet be his own, stardust trail like blood on the soles of his shoes offering the cartographer little more than string. Two, unlikely, he had never been interested in companionship he could not hunt and thread a needle through. </p><p>“The wild calls home what it will, and sings death to what it doesn’t, and here you are,” he observed, gesturing to him with one hand. “I wonder yet, young rose, where the stars are singing now.” The siren in question blinked, tensing, the stars a little brighter with some fear he did not quite grasp. That had never been penned down in the script.</p><p>“You should at least try to make sense of your words, Minos,” he remarked, his voice clipped with annoyance. “They don’t make much of themselves outside of your head.”</p><p>He twitched a smile, as he cursed himself inwardly. Albafica was of a poisonous line he knew - oh, he had figured that one out, asked after morning glories and hemlock and mandrake and lilies, until finally he had the identity of him in his hands. A poisonous rose only the lilies might yet counter, one who would see them gutted and gone like fish when the clarion call sounded. A rose that did not take well to pretty words, or presents, or presence. If he wished this to last, he had to be careful, had to clip his words into something less poetic. <em>Gentle, Minos. He is a fearful creature.</em></p><p>He raised a hand, palm forward, where he could see. “It is… habit,” he admitted, picking his words like the best of flowers, picking his words for the best of flowers. It was yet for any star to witness if Albafica was more rose than minnow-fish. They always bloomed. “Poetry like poison, poison like a knife.”</p><p>He watched the rose bite back a sigh of irritation, before taking a breath himself, puzzling through his words. Less the butcher’s knife, more paring than that. “I… cannot express it any other way.”</p><p>Albafica slowly nodded, eyeing him. “I was doing stuff,” he muttered. “Is there a way back? I didn’t intend to end up wherever we are.”</p><p>He glanced around them, assessing their surroundings. The cliff, bone-white and inviting, down to a river that would surely wander nowhere. The forest, from where they’d come, that stretched out across the land in a plague of life. His teleport, which backfired as clear as a technique meant to kill.</p><p>“Not that the stars can see,” he answered.</p><p>“Not that you can see,” Albafica corrected, before rising to his feet. He rested his hands upon his hips, cosmos glittering with irritation.</p><p>“No, the stars,” Minos murmured again, dropping his voice lower. No need to poke a rose full of thorns, for he may bite, and cleansing the poison might take more than the sands of time were willing to give him. “The stars, not I.” </p><p>“So we’re stuck here, at least until we get out. I think I am going to see if there’s any food around. I don’t fancy testing my chances against starvation.” Albafica strode back toward the forest, and Minos followed. Leaving him behind would be… disastrous, somehow. The rules never said not to follow, they only said not to ask. Statements and poetry were all he had.</p><p> </p><p>Albafica tried desperately to ignore the other, now with a name, now with a reason for the darkness clouding the stars of his cosmos. He spoke in riddles and couplets, and Albafica was sure that underneath all of his flowery words was the vicious man that he had the reputation for. And yet… If he had to have pictured the Judge of Hell in his mind, it would have been of someone older, rougher, more sadistic and cheerful of it. Minos was… </p><p>He was a lot of things, evidently. They kept running into each other, and even now. Minos tailed him through the wild, keeping enough of a distance that Albafica couldn’t turn around and snip at him, but close enough that they weren’t losing sight of each other anytime soon. </p><p>An hour passed, and he didn’t get any closer to finding food. He stopped in a small clearing long enough to stretch, his legs protesting the terrain, only to see Minos leaned up against a tree, looking innocent enough.</p><p>“The water wanders westward,” he remarked, and tilted his head. “A strange siren you are, not to find it sooner.”</p><p>He glowered at him, debating punching him. Something about his eyes, glittering and bright, told him not to. “If you’re so smart, you can show me, then.” Minos smiled, brief and brilliant.</p><p>“I would be honoured,” he answered, and held out his hand, evidently to walk together. Albafica looked at it. Spectre or no, Judge or no, he was still poisonous, and Minos would meet a quick death if he touched him. After a moment, Minos shrugged, retrieved his hand, and off they went.</p><p>It turned out, now that they were all but stuck with each other, they actually had quite a lot to talk about, and several common interests. They both liked books, haunting libraries and museums and learning about the world around them, and both thought humans had their place but tended to be far too much.</p><p>“I like people well enough, but I like them best when they’re away from me,” Albafica commented offhandedly.</p><p>“Dead folk are the best folk,” Minos agreed, sing-song.</p><p>“Not what I meant, but fair enough.” The laughter all but bubbled out of him. He didn’t want people dead, but he supposed in the Underworld, dead people didn’t get very far out of where they were supposed to be. “Besides, that’s the opposite of what I said. Getting near me is a good way to end up dead.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” came the reply, as his ears picked up the quiet rush of a stream up ahead. “But dead folk don’t linger. The corpses are another matter, and corpses bloom well in gardens like yours. Is it indeed true you bury them for the flowers?”</p><p>He all but burst out laughing. “What else would I do with them? They’re poisonous, and I don’t eat human meat.”</p><p>Minos turned his head over his shoulder to grin at him, playful and light. “You look like one day you just might decide to.” He brushed aside a few low-hanging branches with his wing, and sure enough, in front of them was a deep, semi-wide stream. Even from here, Albafica spied fish in its depths, sure he could catch a few of them.</p><p>Even better, across the stream was a clearing large enough for them to make a temporary shelter, if they needed to. He stepped out onto the beach and breathed in, tasting the clean water on the air.</p><p>“I think we can make this work,” he said, and Minos nodded his agreement. He paused, debating for just a moment. “Is this… contrary to the wisdom of the stars?”</p><p>This time, Minos was the one to start laughing. It was a nice sound, amusement at his attempt but not mocking. It wasn’t a brutal, vicious laugh that he might have expected. “Siren, the stars only witness. If they gave advice, it would not be for something as simple as dinner. That must come from more transitory things.”</p><p>He shrugged. “I’m <em>trying</em>. It’s not like I actually know how your mind spits out poetry like that.”</p><p>Minos gave him a once-over, his lips pursed ever so slightly, like he was debating something. “Practice,” he admitted. “I shall have to unveil the curtain before you, and let the theatre speak for itself.”</p><p>Albafica smiled.</p><p> </p><p>They started a fire together as the sun dropped below the horizon, spearing fish over sticks they’d sheared the bark off of and roasting them. They didn’t taste half-bad, though deboning them was a little tricky. The conversations lasted for hours, everything from botany to literature to what their lives were like. Albafica admitted somewhere in there that he’d always wanted to see Paris, if it was really as beautiful and cultured as they said, ruefully commenting that he’d probably never get to, with the Holy War inching over the horizon and his worry of poisoning everyone.</p><p>With a bit of practice, he was starting to understand Minos’ nonsensical way of speaking. He settled onto his back in the grass, stretching out for sleep, his cloth carefully within its Pandora Box, Minos’ surplice in the equivalent Sacred Coffin, settled beside it, and its owner a few feet away, settled on his side. He looked up to the stars, Pisces low on the horizon but still apparent. It was one of the faintest constellations of the zodiac, but to him, it was the first one to be noticed.</p><p>Minos inclined back, scanning through the lights. “I heard a legend, once,” he said, his voice soft. “It was an old Spectre’s tale, once. Every sun that dips below the horizon comes to rest up in the heavens.” </p><p>Albafica twitched one side of his mouth into a smile. “They proved last century definitively that the earth revolves around the sun, though.”</p><p>Minos glanced over. “Still, stories remain strong. The stars still watch us, even when we cannot see them doing it. A million tiny gods, watching, judging. Before the wilds and the heavens, we are but little things indeed.”</p><p>“No reason why we can’t do big things,” he murmured. “We change the course of history, sometimes in single actions. And we get immortalized in the stars, and in your stories. It isn’t the sun that goes to rest up there. It’s us.”</p><p>“I could tell you where every soul in the past millennium has found their rest, siren. To those of us who guard and govern death, that is trivial indeed. And yet…” Minos paused.</p><p>“If we are so meaningless, then why do the stars answer to the names we give them?” He lifted a hand towards his own constellation, twitching his cosmos to flare in answer to it. For a moment, all he could taste was seasalt and roses. “Maybe we are small. But that doesn’t make us insignificant.”</p><p>Minos’ laugh was small, and sweet, and he wondered for a moment if he could ever stop being a wild, nonsensical thing. If there was more to him than poetry and bloodshed. “True enough. If what we do never matters, then the only thing that could ever matter, is what we do.” He reached over to him, his hand crossing the metre and a half between them, and held out a dark-coloured ribbon. Albafica rolled over onto his side, and when Minos’ hand retreated, leaving the ribbon between them, he took it. He tied his hair quickly into a braid, blushing a little when he saw the other’s smile.</p><p>“Even the gods take notice of us, when we’re brave,” he murmured, and settled back down. “Makes me wonder what all this ends up meaning, if there’s any meaning at all to our existence.”</p><p>“Bright, and brief, and wondrous, siren. I can only wonder, but this seems more than padding the stage. The stars know more than they will tell, and if we are to stir from the depths of the dark, the least we are bound to do is shine bright.”</p><p>“Funny, that’s what my mentor said.” He closed his eyes to the memory. Philosophy was always a favourite of that man, justifying so very much with it. It was comforting, to be understood beneath the starry skies, within the silent forest, where he was sure nobody before them had walked.</p><p>He did not feel as though either of them had broken that silence.</p><p> </p><p>When he awoke, it was to the mute, rose-scented air of the Pisces Temple, the marble roofing above his head, the first rays of dawn across his face. He sat up, blinking, stunned. He was so sure…</p><p>He swept his hair over his shoulder, and sure enough, it was still in a braid, tied with a silken, violet-coloured ribbon. When he brought it to his face, it still smelled like starlight on broad, emerald-green leaves.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>